Memories of my Brother

I decided I would challenge myself to write a poem for my brother every day this month and this is the result. It is rough and rugged and it is a mere work-in-progress but I'm just writing down stuff I want to say.

18. XVIII

Anorexia They said And smiled an ohsoclammmyandinfinitelycondescending Smile And we shook our stunned heads To rid them of shellshock.

I wasn't actually there I'm imagining it Because I was told by our cracked-plate Mum When I came home from school And ate a piece of lemon drizzle cake.

You ought to have come before They said And we tried to claw the water out of our ears Because we must have heard it wrong Because boys didn't get anorexia Wrong patient, wrong label.

I wasn't actually there. I'm imagining it Because I'd been toying so far out in the ocean That I never noticed that You'd used the sand to fill your lungs With depression when you were thirteen.

Not possible.

And I think that there was a tiny rotted part of me Which also held up its hands in protest But not for your sake Because that rotted part of me said that I was the ballerina And I was the vegetarian And I was meant to be the one Who forced tendons forwards Through receding skin The one to bend hip bones into skewers Which could splice away the flesh And retire beautifully, Gracefully beneath the clenching tendrils Of my skin.

And that same tiny rotted part of me Allowed itself to decide, When you were sectioned and removed, That it was better that way Because I got to live once more without Anorexia standing on my toes And because I got to be noticed For once.

And for this tiny rotted part of me And for you I’ve drowned myself in guilt eight times over.

This is it My ninth life and I’m waiting for you To grab me back with forgiveness for sins You never realised that I committed.

I gave up speaking to you when we visited Because you never had the strength to lift your head And so conversed as though the plasticised floor Offered you higher quality compassion And had a better hold of your interest Than I ever could And do you know how shit that made me feel? And it was in those moments that I felt The rot spread deeper Because you always had to be smaller And your voice had to match you So you crushed it back into your throat Until I could no longer hear the pointless answers To the pointless questions Of my small talk And when we stopped talking There was not really very much more silence Than when we spoke So I began to think it would be possible For your whole body to starve itself out all together Without us noticing Because once your voice was gone And your mind was hijacked The little rotten part of me Told me that you weren’t real anymore